Currently, a broad spectrum of diagnostic and therapeutic agents is used for in vivo diagnosis and treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Radionuclides, one important group of pharmaceutical agents, have been shown to be useful for radioimaging and radiotherapy. Radioimaging compounds include metal chelates of radioisotopes such as .sup.111 In, .sup.67 Ga, .sup.99m Tc, or .sup.57 Co, which are used to detect cancer lesions by intravenous administration. Radiotherapeutic agents, such as metal chelates of .sup.90 Y, exert their cytotoxic effects by localized cell destruction via ionizing radiation. Radionuclides, however, suffer from a number of limitations. A particular problem is caused by their toxic side effects, which limit the dosage that may be used safely. In certain cases, adverse side effects are so severe that an effective therapeutic dose cannot be safely administered. Therefore, specific targeting of radionuclides to internal target sites, such as solid tumors, has become a major focus of current medical research. The objective of radionuclide targeting is to improve tumor to normal tissue ratios by concentrating the radioisotope at the target site, while minimizing its uptake in non-target tissues.
Monoclonal antibodies, reactive with human tumor-associated antigens, provide promising agents for the selective delivery of radionuclides. Various methods have been described for the conjugation of radionuclides to antibodies. In one procedure, the tyrosine residues of the antibody molecule are labeled with .sup.131 I. Alternatively, bifunctional chelating agents are applied to bind radioisotopes to antibodies. The bifunctional chelating agents contain as one functional group a chelating moiety capable of forming a tight complex with a metal ion, and as a second functional group a chemically reactive moiety, such as an activated ester, a nitro or amine group, through which the compounds can be coupled to the antibody. Since bifunctional chelator molecules have been shown to increase the stability of isotope antibody conjugates, the latter labeling procedure has gained favor in clinical trials. Despite some promising results, the data from these studies demonstrate that the use of radioisotope antibody conjugates has several limitations. The most important limitation is the high nonspecific uptake of the conjugates in normal tissues, such as liver, bone marrow, and kidney, leading to serious toxic side effects. As a result, some investigators have resorted to local or regional injections of radioisotope antibody conjugates in the area of known lesions, neglecting delivery to remote metastatic sites. Others have used antibody fragments as delivery agents, which have a lower molecular weight and, therefore, may penetrate deeper into tumors. However, they also exhibit high uptake in certain normal tissues resulting in a low therapeutic index.
A recent approach to overcoming these problems has been the development of bifunctional monoclonal antibodies. Such antibodies have a dual specificity, with one binding site for a disease site, e.g. a tumor target, and one binding site for a hapten, which can function as a carrier for a variety of diagnostic and therapeutic agents including radionuclides. The dual specificity allowed the development of a two step targeting procedure for radionuclides. First, the anti-hapten, anti-tumor bifunctional antibody is administered and, after a period of time sufficient for the bifunctional antibody to localize at the tumor site, the radionuclide-derivatized hapten is injected. This approach has the advantage that the non-toxic targeting moiety and the toxic radionuclide-derivatized hapten can be given separately. As a result, large quantities of the targeting moiety can be administered without the risk of serious toxic side effects. Furthermore, increased uptake ratios and faster localization of the radionuclide can be expected, since the radioactivity is attached to the low molecular weight structure of the radionuclide-derivatized hapten capable of fast distribution through the body tissues and rapid clearance through the kidneys.
The bifunctional antibody approach, however, suffers from the fact that the antibody molecule is composed of two monovalent antibody fragments with different specificities. The avidity of monovalent antibody fragments such as Fab fragments is orders of magnitude lower than that of bivalent antibody molecules. The efficacy of the two step bifunctional antibody approach, however, is dependent on high avidity binding of the bifunctional antibody to the radionuclide-derivatized hapten and to extracellular or cell surface antigens at the target site. Moreover, to allow for efficient clearance of non-bound bifunctional antibody from circulation before injection of the radionuclide-derivatized hapten, a period of 4 to 6 days is required. Using monovalent antibody fragments, complete dissociation of bound antibody molecules from the target sites is expected in this period of time. A recent study of the kinetics of antibody binding to surface-immobilized antigen demonstrated that the intact antibody, bound to the surface-immobilized antigen, did not dissociate significantly over a period of almost 3 days, whereas a monovalent Fab' fragment prepared from the same antibody dissociated from the surface-bound antigen with a half-life of 16 hours (N. Nygren, C. Czerkinsky, M. Stenberg, Dissociation of antibody bound to surface-immobilized antigen. J. Immunol. Meth. 85, 87-95, 1985).
In addition to the limitation of monovalent binding, there are problems with the current procedures for the production of bifunctional antibodies. In one method two Fab' fragments of differing specificity are chemically linked to form a F(ab).sub.2 fragment with dual specificity. The preparation of appropriate antibody fragments requires individual adjustment of the experimental conditions for each monoclonal antibody, the yields are often very low, and the hybrid antibodies usually suffer significant, irreversible denaturation. Such denaturation can reduce immunoreactivity and would be expected to result in different metabolic characteristics in vivo. Alternatively, fusion of two hybridomas or a hybridoma with immune spleen cells can be undertaken, with appropriate physical or biochemical selection of hybrid hybridomas. The theoretical maximum yield of bifunctional antibody, produced by established hybrid hybridomas, will be 50% of the total immunoglobulin synthesized, the remainder being bivalent parent antibodies. However, the actual production of bifunctional antibody can be much lower. In a recent study a bispecific monoclonal antibody against methotrexate and a human tumor associated antigen was prepared to augment the cytotoxicity of a methotrexate-carrier conjugate. (M. V. Pimm, R. A. Robins, M. J. Embleton, E. Jacobs, A. J. Markham, A. Charleston and R. W. Baldwin, Br. J. Cancer, vol.61, pp.508-513, 1990). The proportions of the total immunoglobulin recovered from the hybrid hybridoma were 60% monospecific antibody from the original hybridoma cells, 27% monospecific antibody from the immune spleen cells, and only 13% bispecific antibody, suggesting a preferential association of homologous heavy chains. These data demonstrate that it will always be necessary when using the hybrid-hybridoma technique to develop strategies for purification of the bifunctional antibody from parent antibodies being produced by the hybridoma. Since the different antibody molecules from one hybrid hybridoma share most properties, an efficient removal of the monospecific antibodies would require two affinity purification steps, a time consuming procedure known to cause partial denaturation of the purified antibodies.
The problems listed in the foregoing are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather to describe many of the factors that tend to limit the potential clinical value of the described agents. While the two-step procedure, developed for bifunctional antibodies, provides some advantages over other targeting procedures, there exists a need for a more effective means by which the concentration of a radionuclide or another diagnostic or therapeutic agent may be maintained at in vivo target sites for a period of time sufficient to achieve desired results. Further, there exists a need for an effective delivery system consisting of components that can be easily synthesized and purified at high yields.